Guns Effective Defense Against Rape

This is the first column in a two-part series
discussing how guns can protect women during rape attempts.

On Oct. 3, 2000, a woman was raped near the East River Flats
Park. The police report triggered headlines as well as consternation
among many students and staff members.

In reality,
it wasn't news, and shouldn't have shocked anybody. Yes, it differed in
several particulars from the typical campus rape. (Both victim and
perpetrator were older than most students and he was a stranger to her;
it occurred outside rather than indoors; the felon was one of only 5
percent of rapists to use a firearm; the woman reported it to police.)
But the sad fact is that rape is, quite literally, an everyday event on
our campus. Although the media — including the Daily — must not have
recognized it, they were writing "Dog Bites Man" stories, not "Man
Bites Dog."

The Department of Justice has recently
released an important new study: "The Sexual Victimization of College
Women." Its chief finding is about 2.8 percent of women in college
experienced a completed or attempted forcible rape in the previous
approximately seven months, only about 5 percent of which are reported
to police.

Extrapolating from these figures, the
authors suggest 4.9 percent of college women suffer such an assault in
any given calendar year, and perhaps 20 to 25 percent over the course
of a typical undergraduate career. (Graduate students appear to be at
considerably lower risk.) This survey appears to be free of the
ambiguous questions that provoked heavy criticism of earlier studies
reaching similar conclusions.

The Twin Cities
campus of the University of Minnesota has 45,361 students. We would
therefore expect about 2,200 completed or attempted forcible rapes per
year, or about 6 a day on average, assuming the current findings are
approximately correct. Contrast that with the average of 57 annual
"forcible sex offenses" (including events that would not be classified
as rape or attempted rape) the University has reported to the
Department of Education over the last three years — the official number
a prospective student will see before deciding whether to attend.

In 1999, an independent crime research firm, CAP Index, Inc.,
reported the University's neighborhood ranks eighth on their scale of
one to 10 (with higher numbers being worse), meaning the crime rate
here is three to five times the national rate.

So
what can women on campus do to reduce their risk? The new Justice
Department study provides several pieces of useful information — some
new, some confirming conclusions of previous research.

1)
Intoxication is probably the greatest risk factor, apart from simply
being female. This is almost certainly due to a combination of the
effects of high blood levels of alcohol: One's physical strength and
coordination are impaired, one's inhibitions (e.g., to flirtatious or
overtly sexual behavior) are lowered, and one's mental alertness is
compromised.

Raising this point always brings the
charge that one is blaming the victim. Not at all. In an ideal world, a
young woman could drink herself into a stupor at any place and time and
still not be raped. But in that same ideal world, I could walk through
Central Park at midnight with a wad of $100 bills hanging out of my
pocket and still not be mugged. We do not live in that world; it is
foolhardy and naive to act as if we do.

It is an
inescapable fact that choosing to imbibe to the point of being drunk is
choosing to be at an increased risk of being raped, as surely as
getting in a car with a drunk driver is choosing to be at an increased
risk of being injured in a crash. Certainly some people make such
choices without deliberation as to the risk that accompanies it, but
the risk accompanies the choice nevertheless.

2)
Two-thirds of the rapes occurred off-campus, though they might have
been locations immediately adjacent to campus, such as bars or
apartments. The majority occurred in housing, especially the victim's
own home. Predictably, more than half occurred after midnight, with
most of the others happening between 6 p.m. and midnight.

3)
Ninety-three percent of the completed forcible rapes and 82 percent of
the attempted rapes were committed by classmates, friends and
boyfriends/ex-boyfriends; acquaintances and "other" (presumably
including strangers) made up the small remaining fraction. However,
despite the frequent use of the term "date rape," only 13 percent of
completed rapes and 35 percent of attempted ones occurred on what the
victim categorized as a "date."

But the Justice
Department gives interesting data on an additional step women can take
to help prevent the escalation of an attempted rape to a completed one:
physical resistance.

"For both completed rape and
sexual coercion, victims of completed acts were less likely to take
protective action than those who experienced attempted victimization.
This finding suggests that the intended victim's willingness or ability
to use protection might be one reason attempts to rape and coerce sex
failed. Note that the most common protective action was using physical
force against the assailant. Nearly 70 percent of victims of attempted
rape used this response — again, a plausible reason many of these acts
were not completed." Unfortunately, the survey did not further
elucidate the sub-types of physical resistance used.

The
available scientific literature on this question is divided, with some
studies concluding physical resistance — with all types considered
together — increases a woman's chance of the rape being completed
and/or that she will be seriously injured. (This wording is unavoidable
but is not meant to imply that the rape itself is not a grave injury.)
Others find the opposite, again with all forms of physical resistance
analyzed as one.

However, most recent studies with
improved methodology are consistently showing that the more forceful
the resistance, the lower the risk of a completed rape, with no
increase in physical injury. Sarah Ullman's original research (Journal
of Interpersonal Violence, 1998) and critical review of past studies
(Criminal Justice and Behavior, 1997) are especially valuable in
solidifying this conclusion.

I wish to single out
one particular subtype of physical resistance: Use of a weapon, and
especially a firearm, is statistically a woman's best means of
resistance, greatly enhancing her odds of escaping both rape and
injury, compared to any other strategy of physical or verbal
resistance. This conclusion is drawn from four types of information.

First, a 1989 study (Furby, Journal of Interpersonal Violence)
found that both male and female survey respondents judged a gun to be
the most effective means that a potential rape victim could use to fend
off the assault. Rape "experts" considered it a close second, after
eye-gouging.

Second, raw data from the 1979-1985
installments of the Justice Department's annual National Crime Victim
Survey show that when a woman resists a stranger rape with a gun, the
probability of completion was 0.1 percent and of victim injury 0.0
percent, compared to 31 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for all
stranger rapes (Kleck, Social Problems, 1990).

Third,
a recent paper (Southwick, Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000) analyzed
victim resistance to violent crimes generally, with robbery, aggravated
assault and rape considered together. Women who resisted with a gun
were 2.5 times more likely to escape without injury than those who did
not resist and 4 times more likely to escape uninjured than those who
resisted with any means other than a gun. Similarly, their property
losses in a robbery were reduced more than six-fold and almost
three-fold, respectively, compared to the other categories of
resistance strategy.

Fourth, we have two studies in
the last 20 years that directly address the outcomes of women who
resist attempted rape with a weapon. (Lizotte, Journal of Quantitative
Criminology, 1986; Kleck, Social Problems, 1990.) The former concludes,
"Further, women who resist rape with a gun or knife dramatically
decrease their probability of completion." (Lizotte did not analyze
victim injuries apart from the rape itself.) The latter concludes that
"resistance with a gun or knife is the most effective form of
resistance for preventing completion of a rape"; this is accomplished
"without creating any significant additional risk of other injury."

The best conclusion from available scientific data, then, is
when avoidance of rape has failed and one must choose between being
raped and resisting, a woman's best option is to resist with a gun in
her hands.